Lacrymosa
by Kyizi
Summary: He was a bird in flight, glorious to watch, but not meant for this earth and not meant for her, as she walked in the dirt.[Lita Ficathon Entry LitaJeff]


**Lacrymosa**

**By Kyizi**

**Disclaimer:** The WWE and all related items do not belong to me; only the story is mine. No copyright infringement intended.

**Rating:** 12A/PG-13

**Distribution:** Please ask.

**Pairing:** Lita/Jeff

**Spoilers: **All Lita storyline is fair game.

**Feedback: **Please, it makes me smile :)

**Notes: **This is a response to the Lita Ficathon, filling in for Sez. This story is for Professional Scatterbrain who requested the following:

**Must Haves: **

Lita/Jeff

A 'no strings friendship with benefits' getting very complicated.

**Must Not Have: **

Stephanie being nice to people, children, or animals.

Lita as a damsel in distress.

Lita/Cena.

**Lyrics: **

"You've got dirt on your collar."

"Your heart will lead you to disaster because every truth contradicts every other truth."

Okay, so this is rather 'bitty' and it might seem confusing, but that's how it's meant to read. I am so sorry I took so long to get this posted and I hope that this meets your expectations! I'm sorry your lyrics weren't worked in, but I just couldn't seem to get them in there. I think that one, however, is kind of fitting and it was the one that gave me the inspiration, so it's quoted at the start.

xxxxx

_"Your heart will lead you to disaster because every truth contradicts every other truth."_

xxxxx

_Out on your own // cold and alone again // can this be what you really wanted, baby// Blame it on me // set your guilt free // nothing can hold you back now // Now that you're gone // I feel like myself again // grieving the things I can't repair and willing… // To let you blame it on me_

_- Lacrymosa, by Evanescence_

xxxxx

Her breath heaved in her chest as she clutched at the wall, pulling herself around the corner and slowly sliding to the floor. Her shoulders shuddered as her breath hitched and she felt her fingers tensing, angling back as if she were seizing. Her face was tingling, a strange, awkward, and entirely unsettling sensation of pins and needles settling in around her mouth.

Objectively, she knew she was having a panic attack. She could almost look down on herself and watch as she tried to force her breathing into an even in-out that would bring her back to normal, but the moment the tingling sensation reached her eyelids, she knew she was beyond all hope. She was lost and alone and she couldn't breathe and, for some reason, she almost felt the need to laugh hysterically at the situation.

Ironically, she'd brought the whole thing on herself.

xxxxx

_It's okay, everything will be okay._

It had been a long time since she'd ever had faith, since she'd stopped to think that she could get her life back on track. One thing inevitably led to another and she didn't know when to stop, when to start, where she began and the person people thought she was took over. She was left alone and lost and she'd stopped looking for that knight in shining armour a long time ago. She didn't think she was allowed to have one and nor did she think she should need someone else to save her…it took her a long time to admit that she _wanted_ someone to _want _save her. And that was something different entirely.

_I'm here._

She'd had a teddy bear as a child. A worn out, three generations old, ratty, brown teddy bear that looked like it had seen better days. She'd never let him go. Named him 'Rupert' because he looked like he'd once worn a tweed jacket and that was the only name that she could think of that sounded like it fit. She'd made it her mission to find more until she'd got to the point where Rupert Marshall Winston Eugene Nicholas Hubert Dumas had lost all his limbs and his name was longer than his body.

_Stay with me._

Her first kiss had been Michael Morran, a strange, geeky boy with glasses who used to look over her shoulder in math class. It had been a slow bumbling encounter behind the bike shed that she'd tried to romanticise when she re-told the story to her friends. Re-told and added to until she'd realised she'd been getting strange looks until she was finally told about the rumour circulating about how easy she was.

She took to writing the wrong answers in math and failing at that had just been the beginning.

_You're not alone._

When she was seventeen, she'd talked her Uncle Mike into remodelling his worn out old Yamaha under the promise that she'd re-paint it, pay for the upkeep, and promised always to ride with a helmet on. It had been broken for so long that the fact that they were able to get it up and running had been a miracle in and of itself.

She'd painted it blue and, in an effort to perfect the cool she was trying to emulate, written the letters C.O.D. on the back in writing so small that it was only meant for her. Everyone had eventually spotted them and when her father had taken to calling it 'the old fish', she'd scrubbed at it until there was a rusting scratch where her careful lettering had gone. The name had stuck and she'd crashed it three weeks after her birthday, flying head first over the handlebars and crushing one of her ribs into her lungs.

There had been sharp pains in her chest and she couldn't remember the feeling ever stopping.

_That's it, easy now._

The pains were still throbbing in and out of her lungs and it took her at least two minutes to realise that there was something covering her mouth. There was someone leaning over her, forcing something over her lips and she started to panic, she tried to pull away, tried to fight, to kick, to scream, but there was nothing she could do. Her body was unresponsive and she just wanted to sleep. Maybe this way was better…slowly slipping into a stream of nothingness. She could just…stop.

There were hands on her face, brushing her hair away. Hands she could see, but not quite understand because she felt completely numb and it was only sight without sensation. She tried to follow the hands to the wrists, follow the patterns above that led to a face she might know…but was there really any point, was there really anyone she'd care to see? Was there even anyone who would care enough to give the gentle, but frantic caress she wished she could feel?

She almost wanted it to hurt, because physical pain was something she could understand, it was something she could feel and truly explain. It had a cause and a purpose and it wasn't something that crushed her from the inside out and broke her and stopped her from really feeling anything anymore. She didn't want to feel anything anymore. It just hurt too much. Her chest hurt. It hurt inside and out and she just wanted it to end. She had spent so long trapped inside and there was something in her that was desperate to just _let go_.

_Please don't leave me._

xxxxx

There was a strange beeping sound repeating slowly over and over until it was all she could hear, she focussed on it, listened to the continuity with an almost wistful silence. She'd never been predictable, never really been something that could be tied down or labelled, categorised or coerced. She was who she was. Nothing more and nothing less and she wasn't willing to change that for anyone.

Maybe that was why she inevitably ended up alone.

"Lita?"

His soft voice was both a balm and a poison, something she didn't want to hear and yet craved with every fibre in her being. It wasn't meant to be this complicated, she wasn't meant to want or to have.

"Li, are you awake?"

Slowly, she opened her eyes, blinking away the harshness of the lamp to her left. Everything was blurry and undefined and she rather thought she preferred the world this way; it was easier to deal with things when you could pretend that there were no boundaries, no beginning and no end. Nothing and no one to disappoint.

"Hey, sleeping beauty."

Her eyes wouldn't stay open as he reached for her. This time, she almost felt his caress. She thought that, in another lifetime, she might have smiled.

xxxxx

When she woke up next, she was more aware. She could still hear the strange beeping sounds, knew that, without opening her eyes, he was still holding vigil by her side. He had a presence that no one could deny. It didn't overpower or undermine anyone else's, it just was. She had always taken notice of that, had always understood that he was meant for greater things and she had never been stupid enough to believe that that might be her. He was a bird in flight, glorious to watch, but not meant for this earth and not meant for her, as she walked in the dirt.

Despite her alertness, it took her time to realise that he was talking. His words drifted slowly over her, the lull of his voice calm and focussed, so much certainty that she had always had to avoid his eyes when he spoke, because she couldn't handle that much of his reality. He wanted to fly with her. He always had. She had taken the easy option and chosen to watch from under his wings as he reached for the dreams she no longer had the heart to have.

"…so sorry. I never meant to push you. I never meant…for any of this. I'm…God, I can't even apologise right."

"You don't need to." Her voice was rough and her throat was raw. It took her a few steadying breaths before she had the energy to pull the mask from her face and, by the time she'd struggled to open her eyes, he was sitting by her arm, holding a glass of water to her mouth and reverently cupping the back of her head as he helped her sip it.

She wanted to tell him that she didn't deserve his tenderness. She wanted to tell that he should leave her and search for something that meant more. She wanted a lot of things that contradicted everything else. She wanted _him_. She just didn't think she deserved him.

He tried to put the mask back over her face, but she sluggishly shook it off. She forced her eyes to stay open and she took a moment to just look at him. She took in the angles of his face, the worry on his brow lines, and the one thing she never thought she'd see in his eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he repeated, his voice hollow and his eyes telling her so much more.

"It's not your fault," she said, please that her voice had held out. She had to take the small victories where she could.

He replaced the glass on the cabinet by her bed and leaned over her, bracing himself on his elbows at either side of her head. She wanted to push him away, wanted to tell him to leave before she broke him the way she'd broken herself, but she couldn't. Deep down, she knew she didn't want to.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he whispered fearfully.

"You…okay, you did."

He smiled at her and it took a moment for her to realise that the stretching she could feel on her cracked lips was her smiling at him in return.

"When we started this…God, Li, I just wanted you to smile again. I thought…I stupidly thought I could be the one to make you want to."

"You do."

"I hated watching you on TV while I was gone. I hated watching you try to be someone you weren't. You lost yourself along the way and I just wanted to find you."

She could feel the tears on her face, but he didn't let them fall. He leaned down and kissed her cheeks and she could feel the wetness stop and settle where it was.

"You're the only one who ever could find me," she said. "I just didn't want to be found, Jeff. I've been so good at just being what they wanted and you had to come back. You had to come back and make me face it and I just wanted…it was easier to pretend." She smiled wryly, ignoring the pain as her lips cracked protested. "So I guess my 'we already know everything about each other, so what'd be wrong about learning more between the sheets' idea wasn't really as well planned out as I thought."

Jeff chuckled. "Personally, I kinda thought that was one of your better ideas."

"Unlike the ones I've been making the last few years," she said softly.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Jeff sighed. "Lita, you survived the only way you could. You built up walls and did what you thought would keep you going. I know what those contracts are like, you couldn't get out of it and…and I'm _so_ sorry I wasn't there to offer you help when you needed it."

"But you did…you did help."

Jeff winced. "Edge told you." It wasn't a question, but she nodded anyway.

"When…when we had to do the 'live sex' thing, he went insane, tried to punch Vince…I heard him talking to you on the phone, apologising…You asked him to…and I never thanked you. Not even then."

"You never have to. And I'm back now. I'm here. For as long as you want to stay in this business, and even when you leave, I promise I'll always be here for you." She frowned and he brushed her face with his thumbs. "What is it?"

"Even though you asked him to help me… You know it was my idea," she said, finally broaching the one thing she'd never wanted to face with him.

"You did what you had to do. The fans might've been able to forget what Kane did to you, but I'm sure as hell glad you let him pay for it. Anything else you did along the way kept you sane."

"Why, Jeff?" she finally asked softly. "I don't understand why you would…how you could ever…"

He smiled. "That's just one of the reasons why I do. You think no one knows you. You think that no one sees over those walls you build, but I can see right through them. I've always seen through them…always seen you, even when you made sure you were looking the other way. You're not alone."

She smiled, feeling her eyes water again as she looked into his eyes. Suddenly, she didn't feel so scared anymore.

"Say it again."

"What?"

He knew what she was asking, but he had to make sure. He had to hear it and she had to say it. She had been running for too long.

"I promise I won't run this time," she whispered. "And the breathing apparatus is still here."

He laughed and she smiled. "God, I love you," he said, leaning slowly towards her. Her eyes fluttered closed and, as he kissed her, she decided that, for once, maybe she could let him in. She was already flying and, maybe, he'd help her find her dreams again.

xxxxx

**End.**

If any of you have ever experienced an asthma attack or a panic attack (I've had the unfortunate curse of experiencing both on more than one occasion), then I'm sure you understand the weird things that pop into your mind. The odd things you remember and, of course, if you're having a panic attack, the terrifying experience where your eyes get pins and needles and you can't move your face because it tingles and hurts. I have no idea why I chose to write this, but you can all be assured that the sensations described are (from my experience) accurate and not at all pleasant. I hope you never have to endure one!

I originally was writing something light-hearted and _so_ nothing like this! However, I couldn't seem to get it to work. I did keep it, though, so there's every chance it'll be used in another fic at a later date.

Oh, yeah, and for all you unfortunates who don't know, C.O.D. is a song by ACDC, it stands for Care Of the Devil. Great song. Great band.

Hope you all enjoyed, feel free to leave feedback!

Also, for those who were interested in the Lita/Randy // Lita/John ficathon, I know I said before Christmas, but I'm moving flat at the end of next week (WOOHOO!) and my first point of call is getting the internet set up. Therefore, in Feb, I should be all set to host it! Hope I still have interest! ;)


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